“She was a fighter, and one of our pinky promises was that we never give up, we never give up on anything in this life,” Capobianco said. “I’m overwhelmed, but I’m not giving up.”

Milan passed away in 2009 from an inoperable brain tumor. The young girl was diagnosed with the terminal condition a few days before her seventh birthday. Doctors told Capobianco that radiation treatment could only buy the family time.

“Unfortunately they said, there’s really nothing they can do, that there wasn’t any research being done,” she explained. “”We thought please someone help us, because we were just being turned away everywhere else.”

After getting several other opinions, the family returned to Grand Rapids with fading hope. Capobianco said that’s when they turned to the Van Andel Institute (VAI) to raise money for a cure. Milan’s Miracle Fund was created to support VAI research to help her daughter. Since losing Milan, the fund now supports other families in West Michigan along with research into a variety of pediatric cancers.